Boyds artist drowns while swimming in Ocean City with son

Wagner was finishing a documentary for Access Montgomery about a mail carrier

A Boyds artist drowned in Ocean City on his birthday last week when he got caught in a rip current while swimming with his 16-year-old son, according to police.

Ocean City Fire Department workers were able to rescue the teen Sept. 21 from the dark, choppy surf but lost sight of his father Richard Wagner, 52, when he was pulled underwater and caught in a channel between the surf line and a sandbar created by the strong currents, said Officer Michael Levy, an Ocean City Police Department spokesman. A surfer spotted Wagner in the water at 7:10 p.m., 40 minutes after emergency responders were called to help the swimmers, according to a police statement. He was several hundred feet away from where he was last seen.

"I tell you, it is physically brutal," Levy said. "The Atlantic is a very unforgiving ocean."

Wagner was pronounced dead at Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, Levy said. His son was treated and released.

Wagner is the fifth person to drown at an Ocean City beach in five years and the first in 2009, said Lt. Ward Kovacs of the Ocean City Beach Patrol.

Wagner was a multimedia artist who often worked on projects with his wife, Marcia. He directed a short documentary about the Boyds Negro School for the Boyds Historical Society in 2004 and was in the process of completing a film about former Boyds mail carrier Arthur Virts for Access Montgomery public television station. The four-minute documentary was completed as part of an Access Montgomery class and aired over the summer, but Wagner was working on expanding it into a longer piece, training and volunteer services manager Larry Merewitz said.

"I'm heartbroken over losing him," Virts said Thursday. "It's a shame. He was such a sweet person, so giving, thoughtful, considerate, gentle. … He was really creative. He was different, he was something special."

Wagner moved to Boyds about 30 years ago and had two sons, Virts said. Wagner's family could not be reached for comment.

Wagner was co-director of Concerts in the Country, which he formed in 1978 with co-director Marianne Ross. He created site-specific multimedia art installations that are inspired by the communities where they are set. The whimsical installations often include dance, theater, puppetry, experimental and traditional music, photography, oral history and sculpture.

Sept. 21 was Wagner's birthday, Ross said.

"He was just a total artist all around," said Ross, who met Wagner more than 40 years ago.

Wagner was also a past president of the Boyds Historical Society, President Elaine Fors-MacKellar said.